10 Ways to Better Understand Your Husband
Iām sure you are aware of the ways you and your husband differ in your background and personalities. You may also have different ideas about how to spend your evenings, what kinds of movies you each prefer to watch, and what your ideas of an adventurous weekend would look like. But when you add to the mix their uniquely male qualities, it surely could be a case for your girlfriends that your husband is from a different world than you are.
This should go without saying. Yet, Iām amazed at how many women expect their husbands to be just like their girlfriends and talk about everything, listen intently, and āgo deepā with their feelings. Men are not wired for āchick chatā and the biggest mistake wives make is interpreting this to mean their husbands donāt care. Well, they donāt. But that doesnāt mean they donāt care about you.
You can understand your man better when you realize he approaches life differently, tending to focus more on the detail of fact, while you tend to focus more on feelings. While you tend to ask for help, advice and directions, he often will not. When you offer sympathy, he offers advice and analysis, and while you desire to understand problems, he is driven to solve them. Instead of thinking If only heād be more sensitive, or If only heād be more interested in what I l like, try changing your perspective to I appreciate the way he brings balance to our marriage
2. Realize his need for respect.
Countless studies have affirmed that a man would rather feel respected than loved. While women long to be cherished, loved, and pursued, thereās a sense in which a man can live without love. Itās respect he canāt live without.
Itās interesting to note that in the Bible, husbands are commanded to love their wives. And wives are commanded to respect their husbands (Ephesians 5:22-33). Have you ever thought about why a woman isnāt commanded to love her husband in return? We are commanded throughout the Bible to love one another, and that includes our husbands. But when it comes to this passage, which speaks specifically about the marriage relationship, God apparently knew a woman desires more than anything else to be loved and a man desires more than anything else to be respected. God must have known that as we respect our husbands, we are demonstrating love to them in a way they can more easily see and appreciate.
3. Recognize his need to succeed.
Your husband is wired to be competitive, and therefore winning, succeeding and advancing are extremely important to him. If your husband feels he is in a no-win situation or is failing at something, it will show in his attitude of feeling stuck or wanting to give up. If your husband isnāt succeeding at something, he at least needs to feel like heās winning. Let him know he is succeeding in the areas that are most important to him and to you. And if what is important to you isnāt necessarily important to him, let him know every now and then how well he is doing in that area, and it just may become an important area to him after all.
Many a man will give up altogether and go passive when it comes to parenting if you are insisting your parental skills are better. A man may stop communicating if his wife lets him know he is a failure at communication. To the contrary, if you are praising his effortsāeven if at this point they are just effortsāhe will likely want to continue to please you. Treat him like a winner at home, and heāll want to be there more often. Praise him for his handiwork around the house, and youāll find him offering to be your handyman. Encourage him and tell him how good he makes you feel in the bedroom, and heāll be more likely to initiate intimacy. Encouragement goes a long way. And making your husband feel like a winner will make him want to be around youā especially if youāre his No. 1 fan.
4. Allow him time in his "blank
Sometimes itās difficult for us to understand how our husbands can sit on the couch with the TV on, not particularly watching it, and not hear a word we say, nor be capable of responding. I call that my husbandās āveg box.ā Some wives call it their husbandsā āblank box.ā And when you ask him āWhatās on your mind?ā or āWhat are you thinking?ā and he stares off into space and says ānothingāāit really is true; heās in a āno words, no feelingsā box.
Women, on the other hand, constantly have thoughts swirling around in their heads. We are continually connecting events of yesterday to situations today and drawing conclusions. Our husbands appear clueless at what weāre doing, because they are. They donāt understand how we think and we donāt understand how they can be thinking of nothing. Allow your husband to spend time in his blank box doing nothing and thinking about nothing. Itās his way of decompressing so he can come back and re-engage with his wife and family again.
5. Ask him about his dreams.
Proverbs 20:5 says āThe purposes of a personās heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out.ā You can better understand your husband when you can draw out of him his dreams and desires. When your husband has unmet dreams, it might affect how he is processing life or whether or not he is enjoying it. Whereas you and I might conclude he has a bad attitude, he may be dealing with feelings of missing out because he isnāt living from his heart.
Ask your husband what heād love to do if time or money were no object. Give him permission to dream and donāt discount his ideas if they donāt sound practical or realistic. You can understand what makes him tick, what he secretly longs for, and even how you can share in making some of his dreams come true when you take the time to ask, learn and discover the dreams on your husbandās heart.
6. Treat him like a king, but not your God.+
Thereās a difference between treating your husband with the respect and loyalty you would give a king, and depending on him like heās your God. Many women marry with high expectations, only to be gravely disappointed shortly thereafter when they discover their husband canāt possibly meet all of their emotional needs.
Because your husband is a man, he will never be able to meet your needs for sensitivity and understanding like another woman. Because heās not your dad, he canāt make up for what you might feel was lacking in a father-daughter relationship. And most important, because heās not God, he canāt possibly fulfill you in every way. Instead of looking to your husband to be God in your life and fill your every need, look to God as your spiritual husband (Isaiah 54:5). There is nothing that will free up your husband to love you more than taking your emotional expectations off of him and leaving them with God. Your husband can then love you in the best way he is able, without feeling he has an impossible task in front of him. (For practical ways to live this out, see my book, Letting God Meet Your Emotional Needs).
7. Acknowledge his singular focus.
Unlike women who appear to multi-task, men function better with a singular focus and they have a way of compartmentalizing their thoughts and actions. Like his ancient ancestors, your husband is, by nature, a hunter-gatherer, so itās easy for him to zero in onāand stay focused onāa single topic (Picture a cat sitting by a window watching a bird ā he doesnāt move, but is totally fixated).
As you are sensitive to this single-focus characteristic of his, it may help you understand his responseāor lack of responseāto you when you go from topic to topic in your conversation or are tending to āmergeā the areas of your life when he prefers to keep them separate. For example, talking about finances just prior to intimacy will confuse him. If heās in āfinance mode,ā he will not know how to transition well to āromance mode.ā Likewise, if you are talking about the kidsā schooling problems or your aging parentsā needs while heās trying to set up the tent on a camping trip, he will likely not respond to your words, let alone hear them.
8. Allow him sexual pleasure with his wife.
Men are designed, physically and physiologically, to enjoy sexual pleasure with their wives. Your husband wants to enjoy that activity and experience with YOU. And you are the only one he can enjoy that with and still be right and pure before his God. And he knows that, even more than you do.
In Ecclesiastes 9:9, Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, said this: āEnjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given to you under the sunāall your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun.ā
King Solomon wrote a whole book on the meaninglessness of life. And among the few things he found meaningful for a man to enjoy were a good meal and pleasure with his wife. Now think about that! When you prepare a meal for your husband, isnāt it your desire that he enjoy it? Similarly, will you prepare yourself for him, physically, as his reward after dinner? God paid you quite a compliment when He gave you to your husband as your husbandās reward. God considered you a great prize to bring pleasureāin many waysāto your husband.Ā Ā That should make you and I want to be our husbandās reward, not his consolation prize.
9. Accept his love for good food.
Do you ever find yourself wondering why your husband constantly thinks about food? Or how it is he can down a whole steak in minutes when all you feel like eating is a salad? Your husband, if heās like most men, loves to eat. Heāll prefer a meaty meal to your low-calorie morsel every time! And get thisenjoying food is biblical! In Ecclesiastes 2:24, the wise King Solomon says, āThere is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good. This also I have seen that it is from the hand of God.ā
For a man to be able to sit down and enjoy dinnerāor a hearty, messy barbecue lunchāis one of the ways God rewards him for his work here on earth. So let him eat. And donāt knock him when he does. Itās one of the simple pleasures in life he was designed to enjoy.
10. Be patient as his priorities shift with age.
Your husband typically values different things at different seasons of life. In his 20s and 30s, he may prioritize making money and advancing his career because he is in his prime āprovider/achieverā mode. When he approaches his 40s and 50s, he may be more concerned about making his life count and not āwasting timeā doing something that doesnāt matter in the long run. When he reaches his 60s, he may value slowing down to enjoy life or attempt ambitions or ābucket listā items now that he has more time.
Keep in mind, though, that even when his priorities shift with age, heās still the same man you fell in love with and married. His priorities just change through the years, as do yours.
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